Beauty and the Beast (1991 movie)

Beauty and the Beast is a 1991 animated film which tells the fairy tale story of a beautiful woman kept in a castle by a horrific monster. It was the first animated picture to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. It stars the voices of Paige O'Hara, Robby Benson, Richard White, Jerry Orbach, David Ogden Stiers and Angela Lansbury.

The movie was adapted by Linda Woolverton from the story by Roger Allers and Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont (uncredited). It was directed by Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise. The music was by Alan Menken and Howard Ashman.

It won Academy Awards for Best Music, Original Score and Best Music, Song (for Alan Menken and Howard Ashman for Beauty and the Beast). It was nominated for Best Music, Song (for Alan Menken and Howard Ashman for Be Our Guest), Best Music, Song (Alan Menken and Howard Ashman for Belle), Best Picture and Best Sound.

This film also inspired a Broadway stage musical which earned tremendous commercial success, multiple Tony awards and proved to be the first of a whole line of Disney stage productions. There are also Disney versions of the story.

In 1997, a "midquel" called Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas was released directly on to video and in 2002 the United States Library of Congress deemed the film "culturally significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry.

Plot summary

When a prince refuses to let an ugly woman enter his castle with only a rose as a gift, she reveales that she was a powerful enchantress and finding no love in the prince's heart, transforms him into a beast and turns the servants in the castle into tea cups, cloaks, candles etc. This spell can only be broken if the beast learns to love and receives her love in return by his 21st birthday.

The "Beauty" part of the title, a member of French provential village, named Belle is the daughter of a rather loony inventor. She works hard to avoid the unwanted attentions of Gatson. When Maurice, Belle's father, takes his latest invention to a fair he gets lost in the woods and finds the Beast's castle, where he is made the Beast's prisoner.

Belle is taken to the castle by her father's horse and offers to take the place of her father and the Beast agrees and sends Maurice back. Maurice tries to tell people back in the town what has happened to Belle, but they think him insane, so decides to set off to get her back on his own.

Meanwhile, Belle and the Beast fall in love and the Beast becomes more human. When he gives her a magic mirror that will allow the person to see anything they wish to see. She reqests to see her father and sees him sick and dieing. The Beast releases her to go rescue him, and she takes her back to their house. However, Gaston arrives with a lynch mob to take Maurice to the asylum unless Belle agrees to marry him. Belle proves her father sane, by showing them the Beast with the magic mirror. However, Gaston convinces the mob that the Beast is threat to the comunity and leads the mob to the castle. Most of the mob is fought away by the enchanted artifacts of the castle, but Gaston reaches the Beast and begans to fight with him, though the Beast dosen't fight back untill Belle shows up. After Gaston is killed, Belle tells the Beast she loves him, and the spell is broken. The Beast turns into a handsome prince again and the enchanted artifacts of the castle are turned back into people.